Just over a month later, on March 16th, Judge Merrick Garland was nominated by President Obama to fill the late Justice Scalia’s vacant seat on the bench.² In response to the nomination—a perfunctory presidential duty³ involving an ostensibly unobjectionable and eminently qualified appointee⁴—several members of the Senate’s Republican majority unilaterally refused to consider approval of Judge Garland.⁵ Their reasoning was predicated upon the claim that a nebulous “precedent” existed against the consideration of Supreme Court nominees appointed by an exiting Executive during an election year.⁶